Inmate numbers down at jail

Deputies deal with mentally ill prisoners

ByDAN BARKER Times News Editor

Posted:
05/19/2011 04:48:22 PM MDT

Fewer prisoners were held at the Morgan County Jail last year, but those inmates were more difficult to handle.

Morgan County Sheriff Jim Crone told the Board of Morgan County Commissioners Tuesday in his annual report that the average daily population at the jail was about 93 prisoners, down from a high of 111 in 2006.

Jail personnel received 1,835 prisoners over the course of 2010, which was down from a high of 2,452 in 2007, he said. Another way of looking at that is that deputies booked about 150 prisoners a month last year, which is down from about 200 at the peak.

However, there are more challenges with the inmates and they tend to stay longer, Crone said.

Records showed that 186 inmates had chronic, long-term mental illness as indicated by the medications they had to take, he said. Also, the jail had to do 71 suicide watches, sometimes with two or three watches at the same time.

This reflects the fact that the jail is handling more and more mentally ill people, who are usually there on relatively minor offenses, Crone said.

Taking care of the mental and physical health needs of the prisoners is a huge cost for the jail, and a major source of liability if they are not taken care of properly, he said.

At the same time, the jail had 392 inmates who needed medications of one kind or another, which resulted in 1,055 prescriptions, Crone said, but that is down since the jail hired a medical company to do that job.

Advertisement

Total numbers of incidents deputies responded to were also down in 2010 compared to 2009, he said. There were 1,411 reports in 2009 and 1,247 in 2010.

The numbers of crimes against persons such as homicide, sexual assault, robbery, kidnapping, child abuse, domestic violence and harassment were about the same as the year before, but reports of crimes against property were down, Crone said.

Unfortunately, those figures probably do not adequately reflect identity thefts, which are not always reported, he said.

Drug activity in the county is not going away, Crone said.

While there are fewer methamphetamine labs in which people try to make their own drugs, this simply means people are buying it from labs south of the U.S. border, he said.

Deputies have been busy dealing with the issues arising from foreclosures over the past couple of years, and that can be manpower intensive when a house has to be emptied, Crone said.

Revenues were down at the jail, which mainly reflects fewer people in the facility, he said.

However, it was also down a little because the jail is no longer holding Immigration and Customs Enforcement prisoners for very long, Crone said. There are too many issues with the federal authorities and those kinds of prisoners to make it worth it.

The court security station is also run by the Morgan County Sheriff`s Department, and those deputies screened an average of 223 people a day during 2010, Crone said. They also did 724 fingerprinting documentations for those who were seeking teaching licenses, day care providers, those applying for liquor licenses, sex offenders, those seeking concealed carry licenses and court-ordered fingerprinting.

Court security also made an average of one arrest per week by finding people who were wanted on warrants or trying to bring drugs into the Morgan County Justice Center, he said.

The commissioners approved:

An amendment to extend the time limit for a contract to allow Rocky Mountain Natural Meats to buy 10 acres of land west of the Morgan County Fairgrounds.

A contract with Thyssenkrupp Elevator to maintain and repair elevators in county buildings at a cost of $328 a month.

Permits allowing Fort Morgan Farms LLC to trench across Morgan County Road U at 12500 MCRU, across MCR V at 12500 MCR V and bore across MCR 12 about half a mile north of MCR T to install lines for irrigation.

Awarding a bid for culverts to Ace Irrigation and Manufacturing Co. for $16,485.

A letter requesting an additional property tax payment due to a change of classification after the purchase of a piece of property by the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.